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“There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.” ― Paul Krugman

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Hi, I'm Bret. I'm a very Progressive Liberal. I believe in the truth behind science and mathematics. I believe supposed "creationists" are just too ignorant to understand actual science, and fall back to their magic storybook because real science is too hard for their itsy-bitsy lizard brains. I believe in equality for all people; straight, gay, bi, trans, white, black, brown it does not matter. We are all humans on this Earth for a limited time. Celebrate diversity and enjoy with other's bring to your life. End of story. ;-)

Friday, October 30, 2009

By Daniel Tencer

The Raw Story

Vice President George H. W. Bush confided in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that he believed Ronald Reagan was an "extreme conservative" supported by "blockheads and dummies," the former Soviet leader claims.

"In 1987, after my first visit to the United States, Vice President Bush accompanied me to the airport, and told me: 'Reagan is a conservative. An extreme conservative. All the blockheads and dummies are for him, and when he says that something is necessary, they trust him. But if some Democrat had proposed what Reagan did, with you, they might not have trusted him,'" Gorbachev said in an interview with The Nation.

Gorbachev added that he had been informed that, following their first summit in 1985, Reagan reportedly described his Soviet counterpart as a "die-hard Bolshevik" -- this despite the fact that Gorbachev would soon come to be known as a reformer who opened up the Soviet Union politically and ushered in an era of co-operation between east and west.

It's no surprise that there were tensions between Reagan and the elder Bush. In 1980, the two politicians ran aggressive campaign against each other to secure the Republican nomination for president. During that campaign, Bush famously described Reagan's economic policies as "voodoo economics." Many historians believe Reagan picked Bush as his running mate after the primaries because of Bush's popularity with some segments of the Republican electorate.

In his interview, Gorbachev had praise for Reagan, commending the president for coming to agreements with the Soviet Union on nuclear arms reductions despite large policy differences between the two countries, and some personal animosity between the two leaders....(Remainder.)